Auric Ulvin
Following visions and dreams, Auric stumbled across the frozen wastes, his companions left forgotten or dead behind him. He couldn't tell if he was going toward or away from the ivory dragon that haunted him, whose roar echoed in his head, whose wings stretched as far as the horizon. The dragon would kill him, he would be better off to lay down in the snow and die, but he kept going. Would the cold even kill him? He wore prisoner's rags and had been marching for days through a blizzard without any apparent harmful effect. Well, except for the madness. But whether the madness was caused by the cold, shielded him from the cold, or just made him think it shielded him from the cold didn't matter to him. He continued to walk. He would later call the area Letum Frigus, a collapsed mountain surrounded for miles by concentric rings of ice, like frozen waves heading away from a central point. The mountain was once filled with massive caverns, most now destroyed, but deep within the rubble some remained. Auric wandered through what was left of the caverns for days, slowly going deeper into the mountain, turned back over and over by blocked passages as he was pressed on by spirits that didn't see the labyrinth as it was, only as it had been. He knew he was being watched, men from past ages, living ghosts that remained at this sacred place even though their god was gone. The people he would later call Illians. Auric even saw the bodies of others that had walked here before him, killed by the Illians. But they would not attack him. When Auric found the heart of the mountain, he stood outside and looked through the broken archway that lead into it. Not even the Illians dared enter the chamber. When Auric reached out to detect anything divine or arcane in the chamber there was nothing. Echoes of past deeds, visions of a great sword with 21 glyphs on its blade, but nothing real. No danger, nothing worth making this trek, nothing worth even stepping over the threshold to enter the room. But he entered anyway. Three days later, Auric Ulvin came out of the chamber, he was no longer the disheveled boy of Auspire, the teenage prisoner of the Shadowed Vale, the son of a widowed farmer's wife. What he was is now is not clear to anyone, and Auric never spoke of what occurred in the chamber, but he commanded the obedience of the Illians when he came out. "Once you had been the greatest of scholars and priests, tributes were paid to you by all nations. You think those days are past, you dream of the return of your lord and I tell you, he will not come. I am your lord now, forget what you have lost, and think only on what can be gained; follow me and I will return your glory. This world will be yours again." They heard Auric's call, and they followed him Category:Leaders